Beekeeper (57 page)

‘Of course not. None of them will, but Premier Laval would most certainly have been aware of this and may well have sicked Ménétrel on to the switchboard girl not only to get rid of him but to let us know we ought to talk to her.'

The French …
Mein Gott
, the wiliness of their peasants! Laval had grown up as one of them and was known to make much of it. ‘Or to those at the PTT?'

The main exchange. Hermann was learning. ‘Those too. Apart from the plentiful hotels, and the lack of a prominent politician who might not have agreed with them but would have demanded a powerful position, the Government came here because the town possessed a modern telephone exchange and calls could be made to New York, London or anywhere else, even Berlin.'

‘Enjoy yourself.'

Stark under lights that must be far brighter than needed, the victims lay side by side. The white shrouds had been drawn fully back … The skin of each was so pale and waxy-looking – blue and cold, especially in the lips and fingernails, livid elsewhere in blotches, the autopsy incision of the one crudely stitched up from her black-haired pubes to her throat …

‘That … that is Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux, the first of them. Found in the
Grand établissement thermal.
Drowned,' managed Bousquet only to hear St-Cyr calmly saying, ‘Take a moment, Secrétaire. Calm yourself.'

The thermal baths …

‘Unmarried – divorced when still quite young; nineteen, I think. A nurse with her own practice. Age thirty-two or three. Alain André Richard, our Minister of Supplies and Rationing, was quite infatuated with her.'

‘And you, Secrétaire? Were you as “infatuated” with Madame Lefèbvre?'

Whose throat was greenish-yellow and tinged with coppery blue in places and still depressed on either side of where the wire had cut through, the flesh gaping … Flecks of dark blood beneath the skin – showers of them, the smell of her …

‘
Don't!
' said St-Cyr. ‘Come away, Secrétaire.
Away!
A brandy! A glass of water!' he called out to one of the attendants.

‘Brandy?' came the echoing response. ‘He asks for a marc, Hérnand.'

‘Then get it from the safe, idiot. Hurry!' said Hérnand, the boss perhaps.

‘
Merci
,' gasped Bousquet when it had arrived and been downed – three fingers at least and rough. ‘Another. And another. Now leave us and close the door. This is a private matter. Speak of it to anyone and you'll be planting corpses in Russia for our friends.'

The door closed. ‘
Sacr
é
nom de nom
, forgive me,' said Bousquet, looking at Camille's corpse whose nipples had collapsed and were tinged with bluish green and yellow, and whose breasts were slack and marred by livid blotches, no longer warmly being kissed or suckled as she cried out in ecstasy and begged, ‘In, René. In and deep. I have to have you in me!'

‘Tell me about her, Secrétaire. Tell me everything you know. Don't hold back. Hermann and I will only find out, and the sooner we have everything, the sooner we will have her killer or killers.'

The auburn hair was thick but because she'd been hosed down and it had been so cold in here, the hair was slicked and matted and had lost its permanent wave. ‘Her eyes …'

‘They've sunk a little into their sockets. A film of mucus and dead cells forms over the cornea – it's normal with exposure to air after a few hours. Dust collects on it and the surface of the cornea soon becomes brownish and wrinkled. Again, that is normal.'

‘She had beautiful eyes.'

‘Then imagine them as they once were and tell me about her. You loved her?'

‘A little. I'd have been a fool not to have. She was a teacher – it's all in the report. Her husband, a captain, is a guest of our friends. She missed him terribly, this I know, for she'd often say his name when we made love. I think she needed to be held. The old man, her father, was always bitching about his son-in-law's cowardice, always complaining that the boy had taken his daughter away from him and then had shirked his duty. Herr Gessler has his
gestapiste's
eye on him. One can't go around this town continually griping about cowardice in the face of our friends. It doesn't do any of us any good.'

‘A teacher,' said St-Cyr of the victim. One had to bring Bousquet back on track.

‘Nervous – she greedily smoked cigarettes when she could get them, which lately was often enough because I always took her some and the old man was always asking her how she'd come by them.'

Women weren't allowed the tobacco ration which, if available, had been cut in half from two packets, each of twenty, and one of loose tobacco a month. Resented when caught smoking, they had to suffer the censure of most men and so tended to smoke in private or among trusted friends and relatives.

‘That father of hers caught her often,' muttered Bousquet. ‘“He thinks I'm selling myself for tobacco,” she once said and laughed at the idiocy of it.'

The secrétaire was taking things harder than had been expected. ‘Did she know either of the others?'

‘Madame Dupuis taught ballet, but whether or not at Camille's school I simply don't know. But I will quietly make inquiries. They weren't friends. At least, Camille never mentioned her. Perhaps just casual acquaintances – the usual sort of thing one finds among the staff of such institutions. Madame Dupuis would only have been there part-time in any case, so it's possible but not probable they were friends.'

‘And the other victim? A nurse, you said.'

‘Mademoiselle Mailloux worked part-time at a private clinic, but I don't think any dancers went to its doctor simply because the cures he offers must be the usual for this place.'

Tired livers, flagging libidos, et cetera. ‘But the school …? Would she have done part-time nursing there?'

‘Links … you look for links when the only one is that all were killed as another was about to die?'

‘Yet all three of these attempted assassinations failed and you've yet to tell me how Mademoiselle Mailloux was drowned. Was she sharing a bath with the Minister of Supplies and Rationing? Did he, too, avoid the scandal and simply bugger off?'

‘Don't. Please don't. It's painful enough that you've forced me to see them, Camille especially.'

A cigarette was found and, once lighted, was passed to Bousquet. The pipe was packed, the pouch emptied to its last grain.

‘I'll tell Ministre Richard that he has to be completely open with you, Jean-Louis. That little affair of his had been going on for some time and he'd not been as discreet as one would have liked. Marie-Jacqueline would come to his office when she was out on a call and it was near to lunch or the
cinq à sept.
Everyone knew he was fucking her. One saw it in the looks they exchanged and in the lightness of her step, the mischief in her candid dark eyes, the toss of her head – ah! so many signals. That one was a real filly and didn't give a damn if everyone knew what was going on. Indeed, I think she revelled in it. After all, he's quite well off and powerful. A real catch.'

‘They shared a bath?'

‘They drank champagne.'

‘The water was quite hot? A private cubicle, a “discreet” attendant, money in a palm and the couple left alone?' Five to seven were the usual hours for such little liaisons.

‘The autopsy will show that she had consumed at least three-fifths of the bottle of Bollinger Cuvée Spéciale that was found with her. The lights went out. Richard went to see what was the matter – another of the power failures we're all plagued with these days. He called out to the attendant – at least, he will swear to this but isn't sure how far along the corridor he went. Then he felt his way back to the tub, thinking nothing more of her silence than that she must simply be wanting to relax. They touched hands. The toes of her right foot came between his thighs to play with him. He was
certain
she was alive until the lights finally came on again.'

‘But was he the target? Come, come, Secrétaire, if what you have just said is true, he wasn't.'

‘But he must have been.'

Alone, St-Cyr replaced the shrouds, gently tucking each under a chin. ‘Forgive me, please, for uncovering you all like that. I had to shock the Secrétaire into yielding more than he wanted, but have failed. Now I need your hopes and desires, your strengths and weaknesses – everything including fast friends and enemies, and yet … and yet we have so little time.'

All had either just had sex before they'd been killed, or had been about to, and only in the case of Madame Dupuis would it not have been with a man she regularly kept company with. But had she really loved Honoré de Fleury?

Ménétrel had made the couple an offer they couldn't refuse.

She was blonde, blue-eyed, and had been born on 10 April 1915. ‘And therefore a couple of months short of your twenty-eighth birthday. When asked how and when you first met Monsieur de Fleury, Secrétaire Général Bousquet could not recall his ever having enquired of such a thing. Nor could he say with any certainty how long the affair had been going on, only that de Fleury had been careful – “discreet” was the word he used.

‘Camille Lefebvre née Roux,' he said, turning to her and noting how her expression so vastly differed from that of the latest victim. ‘Death by knifing brings sudden shock and disbelief, while that of garrotting brings panic and terror. Your identity card states you've brown hair and brown eyes, but really your hair is that lovely chestnut shade many men admire, and your eyes were of a soft, warm brown with flecks of green, or so our Secrétaire maintains. But here, too, his memory is surprisingly unclear. Perhaps the two of you met at the races, or was it at the tennis or swimming club? Sunshine and long, hot days in any case, so last summer but late, he felt, in August. You introduced yourself to him – he
is
positive about this and says he wasn't looking for an affair and is quite happily married and content. You asked if he could possibly give you a lift home but he has no further recollection of that first meeting. Was it late at night and did he initiate things, as I suspect? You're beautiful and young – your husband has been locked up since the summer of 1940. Did Rene Bousquet consider you vulnerable? Remember, please, that he's incredibly handsome, outgoing and self-confident, is only thirty-three and parks his wife and family in Paris for the schooling of their children.

‘You were born in Lyons on 18 February 1917 – that father of yours must have somehow got himself home on leave, or did he even partake of the Great War like so many, many of us?'

Those who hadn't – Premier Laval among them – had found their reasons, but one would have to hear what Major Roux had to say. Perhaps he would be able to reveal the date, time and place of his daughter's first meeting with Bousquet. It was a thought. And, yes, the Maréchal's closest friends and acquaintances, though few, were often military men, so the two could well know each other. One had best be careful.

Marie-Jacqueline Mailloux, the nurse, had jet-black hair and deep, dark blue eyes that were widely set in an angular face whose expression must often have appeared vital, for the brow was high and wide, the chin narrow, the nose sharp, and there had once been dimples in her apple cheeks.

‘Not a tall woman, but “leggy”, my partner would have said, had he seen you strutting out across a park or walking along some hospital corridor under the appreciative gazes of others like him. The card that everyone has to have filled out when they apply for a marriage licence, a divorce, a lease or house purchase, et cetera – that great bankroll of index cards the Gestapo inherited from the Sûreté and all
préfectures
– states emphatically that you gave birth at the age of nineteen in Tours to twins just as your divorce came through. There were mitigating circumstances in the application and it was granted because your husband, a much older man, was one of the shell-shocked and you couldn't possibly have been expected to cope any longer with his sudden fits of screaming in the night and at other times. The twins, two unnamed girls, were immediately given to the Carmelites, and as soon as you could, you moved to Paris.

‘Born 30 June 1906 in Tours, you were not the thirty-two or -three Secrétaire Général Bousquet imagined, but thirty-seven and hiding it well, though surely he would have examined your papers and this card? The mistress of the Minister of Supplies and Rationing?

‘And you were Bousquet's,' he said to Camille, ‘and you, that of an inspector of finances. Food, Police, and Money. That's simpler than their long-winded titles, isn't it?'

Marie-Jacqueline would have laughed – he was certain of this; Camille would have watched to see where the thought was taking him.

‘And Madame Dupuis?' he asked. ‘Oh for sure, the Maréchal has exquisite taste, but you were completely unaware that someone was waiting on that little balcony. Once taken though, you did manage to slip away in the Hall des Sources – how was this possible? Did he call out to his associate? It was pitch dark – was he momentarily distracted?'

Her killer had also been waiting. The smell of cigar smoke must have permeated that of the damp and the hydrogen sulphide, especially since she had then to be hunted down.

‘A long strand of blue sapphires and a pair of diamond earrings,' he said. ‘The first in the style of the 1920s to go with the dress and shoes; the second in that of the Belle Époque and the
fin de siède
but, really, the earrings could have been worn at any time since 1890 and beads were in vogue then too, so perhaps both came from the same source.'

There'd been no card or name in that gift box. There'd been two visits to her room, the first to leave her identity card, the second, the love letters, dress and jewellery.

‘The letters were tied with a pink ribbon as though cherished when, if I understand your feelings for the Maréchal, you didn't want to have anything to do with him.'